The following abbreviations are herewith defined.
BTS base station
DL downlink (Node B to UE)
FDMA frequency division multiple access
IP internet protocol
L1 layer 1 (physical layer, PHY)
L2 layer 2 (medium access control, MAC)
L3 layer 3 (radio network layer, RNL)
LTE long term evolution of UTRAN
MAC medium access control (layer 2, L2)
Node B base station
OFDMA orthogonal frequency division multiple access
PDCP packet data convergence protocol
PHY physical layer (layer 1, L1)
QoS quality of service
RNL radio network layer (layer 3, L3)
RRC radio resource control
SAP service access point
SFN system frame number
TTI transmission time interval
UE user equipment
UL uplink (UE to Node B)
UTRAN universal terrestrial radio access network
VoIP voice over IP
A reasonable working assumption when considering UTRAN LTE, which may sometimes be referred to as 3.9G, is that the system will primarily rely on so-called one time allocations, where a serving cell explicitly signals to a UE in every sub-frame where the UE is allocated transmission resources. The signaling to allocate transmission resources can be sent as part of a Layer-1 (physical layer) allocation table. However, the allocation table represents a signaling overhead that consumes some amount of the finite available bandwidth.